Tyler Hilton

I got my start pretty early, around 5th grade, when my dad taught me three chords on my electric guitar. My uncle had just given me his old amp and guitar as a Christmas surprise and so my dad figured I should probably learn to play it. I didn't really do much with my guitar and it was set aside for awhile while I concentrated on piano lessons which I thoroughly enjoyed....mmm ok that would be a lie. Finally I got this piano book of Elvis songs so I could try and make this ugly instrument we call the piano fun, but instead I found that the same three chords I was taught earlier on guitar by my dad enabled me to play like half the songs in the book. Sometimes there would be a chord I didn't know so I would learn it, and that's the story of how I learned to play guitar. Let's move on.

A friend of mine and I started playing together and thought we were pretty good. When we had a couple of songs down we were sure we were ready to gig. We ended up playing two gigs together before I realized I wasn't ready to play in public yet: one gig was at the Palm Springs street fair, which we got thrown out of for not having a street permit to play, and the other was at a coffee house for an audience of three where we got paid sandwiches. I did some practicing and started appearing at open mics at Pangea Coffee until I was asked to do a show there. From that point I knew I was ready for other coffee houses as well.

I guess everyone in the entertainment business is waiting for that lucky break and I was convinced, even though I had only been gigging for less then a year, that mine was never going to come. Well, one morning I heard that Mark and Brian, the morning radio hosts from KLOS, were giving away Jonny Lang tickets. I wanted them so bad (the tickets, not Mark and Brian) so I kept thinking of crazy stuff to do to win them such as walk down my street wearing plastic wrap only, or calling my mom at work and telling her I had run away and was calling her from inside the cab of a truck driver named Greg. My dad was like, "You should play that Jonny Lang song on the radio for them!" At that point I thought my dad was completely mental and had forgotten that the Mark and Brian show was broadcast to 30 or so cities nationwide! Finally I got the nerve to do it and ended up winning the tickets. Mark and Brian said whenever I had a show to call them up and let them know about it. I kept doing that for a couple of months and then on one of the calls I was asked to come into the studio and play for them live. I thought I had died and gone to heaven! To top that off I was asked to play at their annual Christmas show held at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles. Since then I've just been gigging as much as I can and working in school (as unexciting as that may be sometimes). My other hobby is acting which I love to do as much as I can. I hope someday I can pursue it as a career as well. If you've read this far you either had nothing better planned today or you actually were interested. I hope I made my cliff-notes autobiography semi-interesting. If not, ohhhhh well.